


Love, Draw Your Swords

by orphan_account



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Reisi comes to an understanding about his relationship with Seri.Inspired by the song "Draw Your Swords" by Angus and Julia Stone.
Relationships: Awashima Seri/Munakata Reishi
Kudos: 6





	Love, Draw Your Swords

**Author's Note:**

> There was a song playing while I working on my other Reisi/Seri story, and I found some of the lyrics rather fitting for these two especially the chorus because Seri was dragging her feet on agreeing when she doesn't in canon. I blame it on the AU setting and her not remembering what she saw of his ability in action, but still, I couldn't help doing this piece where they weren't taking their sweet time about things. 
> 
> This is inspired by Angus and Julia Stone's "Draw Your Swords." Not just the title, fitting as it is and as much as it tried to become a terrible pun at the end, but the whole thing works off it, so you could listen to it on repeat while reading it like I did while writing it.

* * *

“Have you ever seen every piece of the puzzle, known its precise placement, and missed something that was right in front of you?”

Seri frowned. She’d never known the captain to miss much of anything. Even when he didn’t seem to be paying attention, he was more aware than anyone of the situations around him, as he proved time and again. He saw so much more of the big picture than anyone she’d ever met.

And his puzzles were always in order. He knew where each piece went even before he was halfway finished with them.

“I miss things that are right in front of me,” she said, because she had. She’d been overconfident in the past, and she’d hadn’t seen some of the subtle things that he or Fushimi had. She didn’t always see the larger picture, focused as she was on the task at hand. “I can’t say I am the same about the puzzle pieces. Sometimes even after you’ve explained where they all go, I don’t see it.”

He turned a piece over in his fingers. “I almost always know the right order, the proper place. All this time, I’ve known… and yet missed it at the same time.”

“Sir?”

He put the piece down before propping his elbows on the desk and lacing his fingers together, resting his head on them. “Is it possible that it changes? Or is it a byproduct of something else?”

“Could it be both?” Seri asked, not sure what he was talking about but wanting to help all the same. He was different now. The changes in him that had worried her after the death of Mikoto Suoh were not the same as the ones she’d seen since the Silver King destroyed the Dresden Slate.

“Hmm. An intriguing notion. Thank you, Lieutenant. You’ve given me more to think about.”

She wasn’t sure that was a good thing, but she nodded. “Very good, Captain. If you have no further need of me, I’ll return to overseeing the training.”

He did not respond, still staring at the puzzle. She gave a bow and left the room, wishing she understood what was troubling him.

* * *

Reisi had timed his arrival carefully, knowing full well the routine that rarely changed unless there was a day off. That was something to be counted upon, even if operating by routine _did_ allow for an enemy to track them. Here, inside these walls, enemies were fewer, but they did still exist. He was still an outsider in many ways, as he had been growing up and surpassing not only his contemporaries in age but his family as well when it came to intelligence and ability. Though his family loved him and even doted upon him at times, he knew that they didn’t understand him.

For many years, he’d thought understanding would come with finding his proper place, and when he became king, he had mistakenly believed understanding would come with it. He was not understood, not by his clan or his family, and if he’d thought it would be there in other kings…

That had only been disappointment.

“Captain?” Awashima asked, frowning at him. She’d just come back from the baths, her hair down and still wet, her arms full of her possessions that did not fit in her bag.

“I need to speak to you.”

She nodded, giving him a look of concern as she did, but she unlocked her door and pushed it open, letting him go inside first. Shutting the door behind him, she locked it before turning on the light. He gave her a glance, and she set down her things, swallowing.

“It’s not like you to come here,” she said, and her frown deepened as she added, “or to dress like a civilian. I… I know things have changed, but I didn’t think you’d chosen to resign.”

“Are you afraid I’d leave you?”

She winced. “You did. You walked away from Scepter 4, from your clan, from me… And then you almost died.”

He wondered if he would have, if she would have been capable of that. He had a fail safe in place, had tried to spare her that role, but she had tried to take it upon herself.

“All true.”

“Please don’t do it again. We need you. I need you. This—even without the Slate, there’s still a place for you here. Don’t go.”

He took a step closer to her, and she backed into the wall. “Is there a problem with me being close? You said you wanted me to stay?”

Her cheeks flushed red. “You still haven’t learned personal space boundaries, sir, though usually you’re more careful with me.”

He was. He knew that. He was aware he didn’t understand that kind of proper placement, where to stand that was not considered a violation of personal space. With men, it was often not an issue, but with women, it tended to be, so he guarded those actions more so than with any males he interacted with, and he’d always made sure to be formal and respectful of her.

“I told you before that what I was missing was the understanding that I was a king.”

“Yes.”

“I always thought when I found that, I’d find understanding as well.”

She sighed. “And yet most of us don’t understand you at all. We try, but you… the way your mind works is hard for us ordinary people to follow. You have so much knowledge, and you can use it while we’re still figuring out what you talk about. You seem so… distant, even when we’re doing some kind of team bonding exercise. That article about you being the universe—you sometimes feel that way to us. It would take a lifetime to understand, and even then we might not. I keep trying, and I still feel like I barely get hold of it when you do something else that surprises me.”

He nodded. “I do surprise you often.”

“I don’t mind it, though I wish I didn’t seem so foolish when it happens.”

“That is the other thing,” he said, and she frowned at him. “You _accept_ it.”

“I don’t see why that’s a bad thing,” she said, now defensive. “I may not know all your reasons, but you have them. I can trust you to do what is right and uphold the standards of—”

He closed the last of the distance between them and kissed her. Being impulsive wasn’t his style, either, but he didn’t want this to turn into another misunderstanding. She could be oblivious, since she had yet to understand Hidaka’s attempts to impress her for what they were, and Reisi would not allow himself to be in that same position.

“Captain?”

“It may well be that no one will ever understand me,” he said, having reached this conclusion some time ago. “However, you have always accepted me. You followed my lead on the plane, you worked with me, and then when I was chosen by the Slate, you still followed me, even when the idea that I was a king made you question my sanity.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did, and you’d be right to have, considering that the life we know now was not a part of our reality then and I did seem insane.”

She winced. “That is not… I still felt that you were someone that I needed to know more of, that I would have all my questions answered if I stayed with you, and they were. I’ve seen so many things since then. I have, and I’ve always drawn strength from being at your side. I just… you kissed me.”

“Yes.”

“Am I…?”

“A replacement? A proxy?” Reisi shook his head. “No. It has taken me this long to understand something I feel others might have grasped sooner, so easily, and it does not sit well with my pride knowing that I failed to comprehend something so basic, but I nevertheless know now. I’ve always valued the trust and faith you placed in me, your willingness to stay beside me as I strove to create the order I alone could see. You accepted me as I am, and you were the first to do so outside my family. You had no reason to do so.”

She shook her head. “You saved my life.”

“You accepted me before that. You continued to accept me after I was chosen by the Slate. You never wavered in that.”

She swallowed. “I think others would have something to say about such blind loyalty.”

“Maybe they’d have a right to if it was actually blind. You are not blind when it comes to me, are you, Awashima?”

She shook her head. “I might not understand all of your reasons, and sometimes I don’t agree with them, even if I don’t say so. You’ve overridden my orders. You questioned my methods. I have disobeyed your orders. I was wrong to do it, and I paid a price for it. I made others do so as well. That doesn’t mean I don’t think when you give orders. That I don’t wonder about the reasons. If I don’t see them, I have doubts, but I have enough history with you to trust that you have reasons for what you’re doing and that those reasons are usually right.”

“Not always?”

She reached up to touch the part of his face where her fist had once connected with it in anger. “No. Not always.”

“Yet you accept me anyways.”

She nodded. “I do. I’d even come to accept that you didn’t see me as a woman.”

“That is not even possible. Your feminine attributes are undeniable, even if I chose not to act upon such awareness prior to today. It may be that my sexuality doesn’t quite fit any standard definition, but that does not mean I am unaware of what gender you are or what things are possible with a partner like you.”

“You thought about it?”

“I believe every man in this compound with even the least bit of attraction to women has thought about you that way at least once, though most would deny it out of respect for you and your position. I suppose I can’t limit such attraction to the men, either.”

She looked at him. “Are you jealous now?”

He considered that. He’d never had anything to be jealous of in the past, since he was generally ahead of others in terms of knowledge and all that came with it. He’d resented teachers that knew less than him holding him back, but he wouldn’t term that jealousy. He had some, he supposed, towards those who knew what their path was and were already happily down it while he was still missing that understanding of his own, but he didn’t think he’d ever recognized the emotion in himself before now.

“Perhaps. It is an interesting idea, at least.”

“Interesting?”

“I will consider it more later, but for now I’d much rather examine the implication that you were quite aware of me as a man. You feel some kind of attraction, then?”

Her response to that was to put her hand behind his head and pull him close enough for another kiss. He could feel her pressed up against him, the faint damp where she hadn’t managed to get completely dry and the part that was wet from her hair. That was not enough.

He was aware that starting this might not have been the wisest course. He also knew that he did not care. He was no longer a king, and coming to terms with that had led to several avenues of thought that brought him here tonight. He’d already weighed this decision and made his choice. The only variables unaccounted for were hers, and with her acceptance, everything was in place.

“Bedroom,” she said in his ear, and he leaned back to study her. Although flushed, she seemed shameless, her face showing that same determination and fierceness he knew of her as his lieutenant. She’d already set her mind on this as much as he had.

Yet he found himself asking anyway. “Not too soon?”

“This has been coming for years, hasn’t it?”

He knew it might not have happened in some other world. Those possibilities were endless, and he could trace several of them to where it didn’t.

“I already locked the door.”

“I see. Very practical.”

She moved her hands down to his waist. “Would it help if I gave the order to draw swords?”

He chuckled. “There goes the purity of our cause.”

Though at first she laughed, she shook her head. “I don’t know about that. Love is supposed to be the most noble cause there is.”

“I stand corrected,” he said, smiling just before he once again claimed her lips with his own.


End file.
